One father and 2 mothers? In vitro fertilization can now combine DNA from 3 people.
Embryos containing DNA from a man and two women have been created by scientists at Newcastle University.
Around one in 6,500 children is born with mitochondrial disease, which can cause serious and often fatal conditions, including muscular weakness, blindness and heart failure.
Scientists have developed a technique which would potentially allow them to replace defective mitochondria during IVF.
The nuclei from the father's sperm and the mother's egg, which contain the parents' DNA, were removed, leaving behind the faulty mitochondria.
The nuclei were put into another egg from which the nucleus had been removed, but which retained its mitochondria.
This new embryo contained the genes from both parents plus a tiny amount of mitochondrial DNA from the donor egg.
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